miércoles, marzo 07, 2007

Ahmad Batebi was no more than a "simple student", his relatives say, he liked sport, he was open, a part-time actor, was arrested in 1999 after a demonstration in Iran, outside the University of Teheran, when he was helping the hurt demonstrators. He did not have any weapon in him. He was imprisoned at Evin's prison, in Teheran, where he was interrogated continously, heat, tortured. He was hit in the face which broke all his front teeth.

[The continous torture] has left him with back problems, and a great nervous frailty. He was condemned to death for "subversion and sedition against God". The verdict did not have enough basis enough, so Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Guide of the Revolution, changes the punishment for 15 years in prison, afterwards reduced to 10 years.

Afterwards he obtained a permission to go out of prison and marries in 2005. He did not come back to prison. "There is nothing against him", his lawyer says, so he told them the same: "I have done nothing, you know it, I am not going back to prison". During months nothing happens, he was going back to living a normal life, but he began speaking to foreign press, to send and receive e-mails.

Detained again 8 months ago, he is places in a high security wing of the Evin prison, in the 209 section, that "prison inside the prison" ruled by the secret service. After that, some alarming information is filtered: he has had a brain attack and loses conscience often. His parents think his life is threatened while another student, Akbar Mohammadi, died in prison, on July'06, in suspicious circumstances.

So, please, the people shouting about Guantánamo, can they also shout for the live of this brave man or that is so difficult for them to do?